Insight Partners supports Canary Technologies’ mission to enhance the quality of hotel guest experiences

The hospitality industry is back, baby. And with that comes a chance for tech startups to not only help hotels streamline their operations, but in addition concentrate on how they’ll improve the guest experience.

“The modern traveler was born in a time when he is very good at using technology” – Harman Singh Narula, Canary Technologies said co-founder and CEO. “They have expectations. For example, they want to text the front desk instead of answering the phone.”

And with other options available, akin to Airbnb, hotels face competition in the market — competition that’s “really good at technology,” Narula said — and hotels have to take care of that.

Narula, together with long-time friend SJ Sawhney, founded Canary Technologies to provide this technology in order that hotels can offer higher, technology-enhanced guest experiences. Narula previously worked at Starwood Hotels & Resorts and was a management consultant at Bain & Company. Sawhney, the company’s president, led product and technology at Stayful, a reservation platform for independent and boutique hotels founded by the former president of Hotels.com.

They were part of Y Combinator’s summer 2018 cohort, and through that point they were developing software to handle offline booking processes and get rid of paper contracts.

Today, the hotel guest management technology company’s platform digitizes the hotel guest journey from booking to checkout with tools to manage mobile check-in/check-out, registrations, upsells, guest messaging and digital tipping.

It’s an idea that has caught on. Canary currently works with over 20,000 hoteliers worldwide across brands including Marriott International, Four Seasons, Choice Hotels, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Rosewood and Intercontinental Hotel Group.

The company has also grown over the past few years as hotels adopt additional Canary tools. Narula said that since 2022, the company’s revenue has increased by greater than 100%.

Venture capitalists are taking notice. In March, Mews, a hotel SaaS startup, raised $110 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion to help hotels higher manage IT. There can also be Life House, which offers software for hotel operators and owners, which last raised $60 million in 2021.

Now it’s Canary Technologies’ turn. The company has closed $50 million in Series C funding to support the broad rollout of AI technology for guests.

Narula said the financing led by Insight Partners was acquired by internal investors. While he didn’t provide a particular valuation, Narula said the valuation has greater than doubled since its $30 million Series B round in 2022. Insight also led that round.

In addition to Insight Partners, existing investors F-Prime Capital, Thayer Ventures, Y Combinator and Commerce Ventures joined the Series C round. This recent investment brings Canary’s total funding to date to nearly $100 million.

“In what has proven to be a challenging year for growth and performance in the technology ecosystem, we have seen Canary thrive and exceed its ambitious goals, prompting us to double down on spending,” Thomas Krane, managing director at Insight Partners, said in a press release. “We continue to be impressed by Harman, SJ and their tenacity and ability to deliver the best-in-class solutions hoteliers need most, and we are honored to be a part of the company’s journey.”